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Housing Policy in Developing Countries

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Housing Policy in Developing Countries 1 HOUSING POLICY IN DEVELOPING COUNTRIES THE IMPORTANCE OF THE INFORMAL ECONOMY Richard Arnott* January 21, 2008 Abstract: All countries have a formal economy and an informal economy. But, on average, in developing countries the relative size of the informal sector is considerably larger than in developed countries. This paper argues that this has important implications for housing policy in developing countries. That most poor households derive their income from informal employment effectively precludes income-contingent transfers as a method of redistribution. Also, holding fixed real economic activity, the larger is the relative size of the informal sector, the lower is fiscal capacity, and the more distortionary is government provision of a given level of goods and services, which restricts the desirable scale and scope of government policy. For the same reasons, housing policies that have proven successful in developed countries may not be successful when employed in developing countries. Please do not cite or quote without the permission of the author. *Department of Economics University of California, Riverside Riverside, CA 92521 951-827-1581 [email protected] 2 Housing Policy in Developing Countries The Importance of the Informal Economy1 1. Introduction In the foreword to The Challenge of Slums (2003), published by the United Nations Settlements Programme, Kofi Annan wrote: Almost 1 billion, or 32 percent of the world’s urban population, live in slums, the majority of them in the developing world. Moreover, the locus of global poverty is moving to the cities, a process now recognized as the ‘urbanization of poverty’. Without concerted action on the part of municipal authorities, national governments, civil society actors and the international community, the number of slum dwellers is likely to increase in most developing countries. And if no serious action is taken, the number of slum dwellers worldwide is projected to rise over the next 30 years to 2 billion. While one may dispute the numbers and question the use of the word slum, with its socio-pathological connotations, there is no doubt of the magnitude of the housing problems in developing countries. The ideal would be massive redistribution from the over-consuming haves to the have-nots, eliminating poverty. But that is not about to happen. Given their scarce resources, what policies should developing countries employ to best deal with their housing problems, and, ruling out massive redistribution from rich to poor countries, what can the international community do to help? Though the pace of economic research on housing in developing countries has increased rapidly in recent years2, there is still very little empirical work analyzing housing policy 1 I would like to thank Patricia Annez for very helpful comments on an earlier draft. In the past I have criticized “armchair development economists”. With this essay I join their ranks. 3 in developing countries that is persuasive by modern standards in applied econometrics. Either the data are unreliable or insufficiently rich, or the empirical analysis suffers from obvious pitfalls. Case studies are suggestive but not conclusive. The housing policy experience of developed countries is considerably better documented and analyzed. Apart from adjustments that need to be made to reflect the income differences between the two classes of countries, can the received wisdom in developed countries on what constitutes good housing policy be applied to developing countries? Would housing policies that have been successful in developed countries necessarily be successful when applied to developing countries? This paper will argue that the large size of the informal sector relative to the economy in developing countries, as well as the high proportion of housing that is informal, substantially alter the housing policy design problem, so that policies that have succeeded in developing countries may not work well in developing countries. Table 1, which reproduces part of Table 6.1 of United Nations Habitat (2003), presents data on the extent of informal employment3 by City Development Index (CDI) quintile. In the two lowest quintiles about 50% of workers are informally employed, which is 2 See Buckley and Kalarickal (2005) for an enlightening and informed review. 3 “Informal employment” is not precisely defined. The imprecise definition is that an informal employee is “an employee in an unregistered enterprise”. A note to Table 6.1 states: “There is no clear distinction between informally employed and unemployed, which relates to actively seeking work in the formal sector. Quite often, officially unemployed people will work in the informal sector.” The data were collected by the Housing Indicators Program, which was initiated by Stephen Mayo and Shlomo Angel at the World Bank, and has been continued by the World Bank and UN-Habitat. The data were collected for one of the largest cities in each of the 57 countries in the sample. 4 more than double that for the two highest quintiles. In developing countries, the bulk of the poor work in the informal sector. Table 1: GNP per capita and informal employment by City Development Index, 1998 CDI quintile 1 2 3 4 5 GNP per 606 1571 2087 3230 11822 capita, US$ Informal 49 51 40 26 19 empl., % Informal employment is one aspect of the informal economy. Informal housing is another. Angel (2000) defines unauthorized housing to be housing that is not in compliance with current regulations concerning land ownership, land use and zoning, [or] building construction, and squatter housing to be housing that is currently occupying land illegally4. This paper will use the term informal housing as synonymous with Angel’s definition of unauthorized housing. Table 2, which reproduces part of Table 23.2 of Angel (2000), presents data related to housing tenure type for four sets of countries, grouped by income. The most striking result in the table is that in 1990 about two-thirds of housing units in low-income countries were unauthorized, while essentially none in high-income countries were. 4 To this definition of squatter housing, Angel adds the following footnote: “This definition fail[s] to include structures occupied illegally by squatters. Squatter settlements that are recognized by authorities as permanent settlements and that are provided with documentation to this effect have been excluded from the definition.” 5 Table 2: Rates of owner-occupancy, unauthorized housing, and squatter housing by country income group, 1990 Country type Low-income Low-mid-inc Upp-mid-inc High-income Owner 33 59 57 59 occupancy, % Unauthorized 64 27 9 0 housing, % Squatter 17 16 4 0 housing, % The main theme of this paper is that the larger relative size of the informal economy in developing countries imposes important constraints on government policy that are not present in developed countries. These constraints significantly influence the form of sound housing policy in developing countries and undermine the effectiveness of many housing policies that have been successful in developed countries. The gist of the argument runs as follows: 1. Since the bulk of the poor in developing countries work in the informal sector, government cannot accurately measure their incomes. This severely compromises the effectiveness of broad income-related transfer programs and more generally limits the scope for redistribution. 2. At least in low-income countries, most households, and probably therefore the bulk of the most needy households, live in unauthorized housing. Since governments are reluctant to subsidize unauthorized housing, their housing programs, with the exception of public housing, are biased towards authorized housing and therefore against the neediest households. Furthermore, the inability to measure household incomes accurately effectively precludes broad housing assistance programs that are geared to income. 6 3. Holding constant the real income of an economy, the larger is the informal sector, the lower is its fiscal capacity – the maximum amount its governments can collect in tax revenue on a sustained basis. To meet the demand for public services in the face of reduced fiscal capacity, governments in developing countries impose high tax rates on formal sector income and turn to other revenue sources that are inherently inefficient, resulting in highly distortionary fiscal systems. The diminished revenue-raising capabilities relative the size of the economy restrict the scale and scope of expenditure programs that governments can and should undertake, and encourage the use of regulation, both to direct the economy and to collect fee revenue. 4. The consensus is that redistribution in developed countries is best undertaken by the central government since doing so reduces welfare-induced migration. In developing countries, however, local governments and community organizations are better able than the central government to identify the truly needy, which argues for more decentralized redistribution. The above line of argument is static and takes the degree of informality as exogenous. Over the medium and long terms, however, the size of the informal economy relative to the formal economy, as well as the proportion of housing that is informal, are endogenous. Both firms and individuals decide whether to participate in the informal or the formal economy on the basis of perceived self-interest. All else equal, the government would like to increase the proportions of the economy and of the housing market that are formal, and recognizes that this can be achieved by making formal participation more attractive or informal participation less. This may entail some sacrifice of short-run 7 efficiency. For example, in the short run the government would like to regularize informal housing not only to collect more in tax revenue and to extend its control over the economy, but also to facilitate public service provision to the poor. Doing so however encourages new unauthorized settlements, which conflicts with its goal of increasing the housing sector’s degree of formality. One can pose this tradeoff as a conflict between short-run and long-run objectives.
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